1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of business process management, and, in particular, to a system and method for executing a business process workflow.
2. Description of the Related Art
A business process management (BPM) engine, or workflow engine, can be used to design and implement business execution actions, such as marketing campaigns, compensation calculation models, and supply chain management. In the marketing campaign example, a marketer can use the BPM engine to configure a series of connected workflow execution components that make up a marketing campaign. Some BPM engines allow the marketer to visually design, manage, and automate a multi-stage lifecycle marketing program through a drag-and-drop user interface and a library of pre-built program templates.
However, existing workflow execution components are designed for a business execution action that contains a small number of work items. For a business execution action that contains a large number of work items, e.g., on the order of millions or billions of work items, existing workflow execution components either fail due to system overload or introduce unreasonable delays. For example, traditional workflow execution components cannot effectively process an email marketing campaign directed to each of millions of users.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for a technique that addresses the drawbacks and limitations discussed above.